Letter From A Guardsman In Miami

September 13, 1992|By Charles M. Grist, Special To The Sentinel

MIAMI — I'm writing these words at 4 o'clock in the morning under an Army flashlight. Two blocks from here, armed members of my National Guard infantry unit are engaged in combat patrols in the Perrine section of Miami, one of the areas most devastated by Hurricane Andrew.

Our base of operations is along U.S. Highway 1, which we call the Ho Chi ''One'' Trail in reference to the Ho Chi Minh Trail of Vietnam War fame. It is the ravaged shell of what used to be a Winn-Dixie strip shopping center in the middle of a community that looks as if the shock wave of a nuclear bomb had been the real visitor in the night.

There is no electricity or drinkable water, and virtually no operating businesses. The Burger Kings, the McDonalds, the Pizza Huts and other restaurants are gone, with only the shapes of their buildings yielding clues as to the businesses they were.

The neighborhood west of here, which our troops patrol, is a low-income, minority neighborhood that members of my platoon have dubbed ''The 'Hood.'' (They call themselves ''Boyz in the 'Hood.'') Metro-Dade police officers tell us that the area we patrol is as crime-ridden as Liberty City, if not more so.

Elsewhere there are rubble, downed power lines, overturned cars and the stench of rotting food and even death - the carcasses of animals and possibly the bodies of people still lie in the debris.

Our unit has a twofold mission in the 'Hood: provide security to prevent looting and enforce the curfew, currently 9 p.m. to 5 a.m.

Because of its visual similarities to Beirut or other war-torn cities, the citizens here have decided to call the damaged area ''the war zone.'' Members of the National Guard have another reason for calling it that, because some of those in our unit have already been shot at. One of our platoons had an encounter on the street with local gang members who threatened to come back at night and kill us.

Some of the arrests made by just my platoon in our first week in the 'Hood include looters with stolen computer equipment, a man carrying burglary tools and a cocaine pipe, a drunken driver attempting to run one of our road checkpoints, a curfew violator in possession of cocaine, two other curfew violators carrying concealed weapons and drugs, another man carrying a gun concealed in a flashlight, and two men with possible stolen vehicles.

In addition to those actions, we've intervened in a domestic dispute and provided first aid to the husband, who had been slashed in the face; we've led citizens requiring non-emergency aid at nearby neighborhood clinics; we've distributed some of our own military meals - Meals Ready to Eat, better known as MREs - and we've donated food that had been sent to us by our families.

Central Floridians can be proud of their hometown National Guardsmen who have come to South Florida to help out after one of the worst national disasters in American history. Whatever work they did before they came here, today they are soldiers at risk patrolling American neighborhoods to protect American citizens and their property.

We feel a great sense of pride in what we are doing here, but with the vastness of the suffering around us, none of us will ever be the same again.